


transitory

by taykash



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 18:05:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8337520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taykash/pseuds/taykash
Summary: Jun travels, Nino waits.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Nino's birthday, 2012.

Jun had always come and gone, an ephemeron in Nino's life.

"I wander around," Jun says, his voice low in his chest, "but I come home. To _you_ , Nino."

\-----

Nino meets Jun in the summer between the end of junior high and the beginning of high school, the time period in which Nino is convinced that real life begins.

Nino is tossing a baseball in the air, walking around the empty diamond, dust clouds drifting around his sneakers and staining his ankles brown.

"Want to play catch?" The unfamiliar voice belongs to an unfamiliar boy whose teeth are too big for his mouth and his hair spiked in a way that makes Nino want to make a snide comment about dying cacti. But the boy has big brown eyes and the hope in them makes Nino's heart hurt a little, so he just shrugs and tosses the ball to him.

"I'm Jun," the boy tells him, his voice high. Nino looks at him and wonders how he doesn't trip over his feet. Nino's a little taller than him, and, he hopes, more graceful.

Jun has a good arm on him and Nino reluctantly admires his form. Nino's pitch is always just the tiniest bit off because of his incurably bad posture, but Jun's stance is textbook perfect.

Jun is staying at his grandmother's for the summer, her house a block away from the tiny apartment that Nino shares with his mom and sister. The town is too small and Nino doesn't say he's grateful to have company, but he and Jun set a time to meet the next day. Jun smiles and Nino doesn’t want to like the crooked front tooth that pokes out, but he does anyway.

\-----

Jun kisses Nino first.

They’re lying in the baseball diamond far past midnight. It’s too hot to play during the day, so they spend their afternoons trying to push each other off the road in Mario Kart and their nights sneaking out of their houses to play catch.

It’s been a long day, and after a crack about his feet Jun had chased Nino around the field until they had fallen together, laughing, in the grass.

Nino’s still laughing, his body falling loosely out of a stretch when Jun suddenly pulls him close. Nino can taste his nervousness.

Nino doesn’t know how long they lie there, but when he climbs back through his window he’s shivering from the lack of body heat and the sunrise colors his curtains gold. 

\-----

The summer changes, then.

Mario Kart turns to quiet, fervent makeouts on the floor of Nino’s room as the Rainbow Road music plays over and over to mask their actions. Catch turns into Nino hiding in Jun’s bed shirtless, pressed together skin to skin as the air conditioner blows too-cold air that gives them reason to be so close.

The night before Jun goes home, Nino grips Jun’s arms so tightly he leaves fingertip-shaped bruises in crescents along his skin.

Jun kisses him goodbye in the morning before he sneaks out and Nino promises him next year and the year after that.

\-----

Jun is so excited that Nino can feel the vibrations jittering through his body, the hand on Nino’s arm gripping almost tight enough to hurt.

Nino gently takes the letter out of Jun’s grasp and places it on the table.

“I can’t believe I’m going to college in America,” Jun breathes, eyes wide.

Nino can’t believe it, either.

The letters from America are frequent at first, photographs of Jun at the Empire State Building or the Brooklyn Bridge enclosed. Jun looks a little embarrassed, but happy, and he signs his name in romaji.

Nino is unable to answer more than every third letter, his replies short. He doesn't know how to respond to Jun's stories of celebrity sightings, of trying food from strange countries, of brigades of speeding yellow taxis. 

The letters begin to taper, excuses of classes and exams and extracurricular activities littering the pages that Nino _does_ get. They come without photographs, with anecdotes of people with strange names and stranger habits, until one day they stop coming at all.

Nino gets a phone call in the August of Jun's sophomore year when he's lying on his balcony, hot and sticky and unable to afford air conditioning.

"Nino?" Jun sounds far away, and Nino imagines the static is the sound of the ocean separating them. It has been months since he's heard from him.

"Nino, I'm coming home for winter break, okay? I'll see you then."

Winter seems about as far away as Jun is.

\-----

Nino gets his first souvenir from Jun for Christmas, a small Statue of Liberty that lights up in the dark. “For when you miss me,” Jun says, smug.

Nino knows he bites something back but he is distracted by this new Jun, this sophisticated Jun with the blond streak in his hair and the glittery rings on his fingers. This Jun goes to jazz clubs and Broadway shows and talks about shopping in the Village.

When they kiss, Jun tastes foreign.

\-----

After graduation, Jun returns to Japan.

He jet-sets from country to country for his fancy job in his fancy office while Nino stays behind, comfortable in his shabby apartment with his video games. Nino isn't ambitious; he takes chances that are presented to him, but unlike Jun, he doesn't run after them.

Jun and Nino live just two train stops apart but Nino is lucky if he sees Jun once a month. He knows that Jun always has a bag packed, either full of clean clothes for his upcoming trip or of laundry from the trip he just came back. Nino has a shelf full of souvenirs from Vietnam, Brazil, South Africa, Russia -- places Nino can name and point out on a map but nowhere he thinks he'll ever go.

When Jun visits they curl up together on the couch and Nino looks at Jun's socks, pink and fuzzy and brand new. Nino's socks are old and worn and his toe pokes out.

Nino wonders if maybe it's time to move on. Jun had moved on years ago -- Nino is the dusty trinket Jun keeps on his shelf labeled "childhood".

The smell Jun leaves on Nino’s sheets changes every time they meet.

\-----

Ohno comes to the coffee shop Nino works in, nut-brown and long-fingered, and Nino wonders what he’s like. He takes his coffee sweet and milky and orders honey toast. When he takes out his wallet, a fishing lure comes with it.

“Ah,” he says, “I was wondering where that went.”

Nino hates the ocean, but a fisherman comes home at the end of the day. Airplanes go too far too fast.

Nino curls his hand around Ohno’s when he takes his cash, and Ohno’s nose crinkles in understanding.

\-----

Jun doesn’t find out about Ohno until a month and a half later when he comes by to drop off Colombia, Indonesia, and Ukraine. He walks up to Nino’s door as Ohno walks out of it, and Nino’s eyes are wide when he notices Jun.

“Ah,” Jun says lightly, “a friend?”

Nino nods, and hopes that his mouth doesn’t look as swollen as it feels.

Jun kisses him too hard and Nino shies away, pretends to make space for the new souvenirs. He has so many the shelf is beginning to bend under the weight.

Nino knows how that feels.

“Nino,” Jun says behind him, and Nino wishes he couldn’t hear the touch of anxiety hiding beneath the exhaustion in Jun’s voice. “Nino, was that…?”

He doesn’t finish and Nino doesn’t answer.

Nino listens to Jun’s footsteps and hopes desperately that they’re not headed for the door, but then he hears the squeak of his old box spring and he has to stop himself from heaving a sign of relief.

“You know I still…” Jun trails off. Nino knows what he wants to say, what he means to say, but neither of them are demonstrative in _that way_ and they haven’t said it since they were teenagers. They don’t have to.

Nino nods, turning back around to face Jun. Jun isn’t looking at him; he’s looking at his hands, fiddling with one of his rings. If he cries, Nino vows, he’s kicking him out.

“What, did you think I was leaving?” Jun’s voice is soft, but the emotion struck through it runs cold in Nino’s veins. “Permanently?”

Nino crosses his arms against Jun’s sudden coldness. Jun’s absences were never permanent, but only in the most technical of terms. The last time Nino saw Jun consistently was the spring they graduated high school.

High school was years ago, and Nino is sick of being Jun’s last resort.

“I travel,” Jun murmurs, and Nino snorts a little at the anger seeping in, “but I come home to you. I don’t have to do that. I’ve come back to you every time since I was fourteen.”

Nino looks around pointedly at the apartment that reads nothing but Nino. There is no Jun here, not even in the cheap gift shop trinkets, a map of a world Nino will never see.

“Just say the word and I’ll go,” Jun continues. Nino wonders if it’s a threat, but he doesn’t say anything at all.

Jun stays.

\-----

The night after, they fight.

They yell at each other in a flurry of ripped magazines and couch cushions, Jun’s eyebrows stark against his bright red face. Nino’s face is hot enough to sear, his throat beginning to ache from the shrill anger in his voice.

It’s the first real conversation they have in years.

\-----

Nino sends Ohno an apology text.

Ohno responds with a doodle of two fish holding fins.

Nino guesses that means they’re okay.

\-----

Jun continues to travel, stepping across borders like birds fly over fences. Nino works, and games, and sometimes he’ll write a song or two for fun. He makes sure there are fresh sheets on the bed and a fully stocked fridge when Jun comes home, ready to collapse in a pile of airport smell.

One night after a rough flight from Mexico that gets rerouted through Alaska, Jun leans his head on Nino’s thigh and sighs, “maybe it’s time to stay home.”

Nino cards his fingers through Jun’s hair and agrees.


End file.
